This one looks promising - and being an epic, it's up to a magnanimous 8 lines! (Can't say I think much of the example, but that's where we come in.)
Albert Einstein: “I’m a giant whose shoulders you’d have stood on, if you could stand.
I’ll give you a brief history of pain with the back of my hand.”
. . . vs. Stephen Hawking: “And while it’s true that my work is based on you,
I’m a supercomputer — you’re like a Ti-82.”
This week: Write a short “rap battle” between any two characters, real or fictional, as in the example above, which quotes two couplets from a video. By short, we mean one or two rhyming couplets per character — so four to eight lines total. As for what counts as rhyme, the Empress might be a wee bit more lenient than usual, but don’t go “rhyming,” say, “stakes” and “blades,” as does one of the Epics. E-mail entries to
losers@washpost.com or fax to 202-334-4312. Deadline is Monday, Oct. 29; results published Nov. 18 (online Nov. 15). No more than 25 entries per entrant per week. Include “Week 993” in your e-mail subject line or it might be ignored as spam. Include your real name, postal address and phone number with your entry